The director of the Windsor Essex Community Health Centre — the agency that encompasses the Teen Health centre and the Sandwich community clinic — is stepping down.

In a news release, the WECHC announced CEO Lynda Monik was leaving her position effective Wednesday.

“This is a very amicable, mutual agreement,” said Rajeeva Sinha, the interim board president of the WECHC. “Now we have to move forward.”

Sinha said the board and Monik discussed the move over the past few weeks. With the WECHC planning to move into a new location in the west end and with the province’s new focus on primary care, the board decided the centre needed a new kind of leadership, he said.

Dr. Glen Bartlett, the director of the community health centre in Grand Bend, has been appointed as interim CEO.

Sinha said the board has not set a deadline for hiring a new permanent CEO, but that part of Bartlett’s role will be to help in the hiring process.

As well, he said, there is no timeline yet for the move into the former site of the College Avenue Community Centre. The city administration worked out a deal with the WECHC last year to take over the site. Sinha said the WECHC is working with the Ministry of Health and the Erie St. Clair LHIN — which oversees health service providers on behalf of the government — on the plan.

In the meantime, Sinha said, all the WECHC services will operate as usual.

In an email to The Star, Teen Health doctor Andrea Steen said she could not comment other than to say that hers and her colleagues’ priority has always been to provide excellent service to teens in Windsor-Essex.

“We will continue to strive for the best service we can provide,” Steen said.

Last year, Steen and other physicians and staff at the Teen Health Centre raised concerns about whether the firings would result in a reduction in teen-focused health programs and whether the remaining programs would be moved into a single site with the Sandwich clinic.

Whether the Teen Health Centre remains as a standalone service will be up to the new CEO and the doctors to decide, Sinha said. Teen Health is “our prized product,” he said, but that the WECHC can’t keep imagining itself in terms of separate locations.

Related

Along with Teen Health, the WECHC also runs the Sandwich Community Health Centre in the west end, the Street Health clinic downtown and the diabetes wellness program on Lauzon Parkway, as well as smaller service sites in the county. There are approximately 120 employees. The WECHC was created in 2009 when Teen Health and the Sandwich clinic amalgamated.

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